Woolf’s consecutively published novels Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse share
similarities in the position of the narrators. Both novels are written in the third person and are narrated by a seemingly omniscient narrator. In addition to this, Woolf uses free indirect speech to present the characters’ inner thoughts as well. Free indirect speech, also referred to as free indirect thought or style, represented speech or indirect interior monologue (Ferguson 234; Snaith 135), is a technique in which a character’s thoughts are presented as part of the narrator’s observations. Unlike direct speech, which is placed within quotation marks, in free
indirect speech the narrator presents a character’s point of view in the third person. The character’s thoughts are reported verbatim, structurally represented as direct speech, but usually do not include a phrase signalling that these are the character’s thoughts and not the narrator’s (Aarts; Rundquist 3; Snaith 134). According to Snaith, what differentiates free indirect speech from stream of consciousness is that in free indirect speech a narrator is present, whereas in stream of consciousness writing there is not. As she notes, free indirect speech is “always reported, mediated” (136). Snaith argues that, as opposed to direct speech or thought, the narrator presents the character’s thoughts, and thus mediates between the character and the reader, but at the same time presents these thoughts in the character’s own words and therefore takes the reader “into the private mind” of the character (137).
The use of free indirect speech was not a new innovation as it was also used in the nineteenth century (Snaith 135). However, Woolf did reinvent this technique by constantly shifting between different characters’ perspectives and the narrator’s descriptions (Auerbach 536; Snaith 135). An example of such switches can be seen in To the Lighthouse:
‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Ramsay, with great severity. Apart from the habit of
exaggeration which they had from her, and from the implication (which was true) that she asked too many people to stay, and had to lodge some in the town, she could not bear incivility to her guests, to young men in particular, who were poor as church mice, ‘exceptionally able’, her husband said, his great admirers, and come here for a holiday. (10)
This fragment is presented in the third person, but phrases such as “poor as church mice”, “his great admirers” and the parenthetical “which was true” suggest that this is focalised by Mrs Ramsay, rather than the central narrator. It is not always clear whose perspective is
represented at what point. For instance, “which was true” might be Mrs Ramsay’s point of view, but it could also be one of her daughters’ underscoring their point that she invites too many people. Especially since the phrase is placed between parentheticals, this might suggest that it introduces a different perspective. According to Cui, Woolf might use parentheticals to further undermine “a coherent narrative viewpoint” (185).
Similarly, Woolf employs free indirect speech in Mrs Dalloway as well. For instance, Clarissa meets Hugh Whitbread on the street in London:
They had just come up – unfortunately – to see doctors. Other people came to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came ‘to see doctors’. Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him to specify. (6)
The first sentence is likely to be directly from the conversation, spoken by Hugh Whitbread himself. Then, the next sentence seems to be Clarissa’s unspoken reaction to what Hugh has just told her, repeating his phrase between quotation marks. The sentence after that might be either the central narrator or still Clarissa’s focalisation, but “times without number” seems to express Clarissa’s opinion. The next part describes the conversation between Clarissa and Hugh again, but in the middle of the sentence, Clarissa starts to focalise again when she describes his appearance Therefore, within one paragraph, the perspective switches multiple times between Clarissa, Hugh and the narrator. As this shows, although sometimes the point of view of the speaker is quite clear, often the shifts are ambiguous.
Although the different perspectives of the characters are emphasised, there still is a central narrator present, who can provide the reader with something that cannot be extracted from the characters’ points of view only. According to Levenson, the narrator of To the Lighthouse has “a power only available to a larger-than-individual perspective”, something which “finite points of view can never guarantee” (25). Although there is still a central narrator in both novels, the narrator is less overtly present than in “The Mark on the Wall” and “The Lady in the Looking-glass”. Because Woolf uses free indirect speech, the narrator is more often describing a character’s thoughts than conveying his or her own interpretation. Ferguson argues that the omniscient narrators in Woolf’s novels never reveal everything
about the characters and their actions as they “must resort to speculation rather than definite assertion” (244). Stressing the Modernist themes of uncertainty and ambiguity, “the authorial narrator is reliable only insofar as the truth may be defined, and he reminds us of this
limitation in his rhetoric” (245). Even though the narrator might have a more complete knowledge of the characters’ inner thoughts and motivations, this is not communicated to the reader. The narrator often does not provide the reader with knowledge that is not otherwise available through the characters’ thoughts.
Therefore, the narrators take a more subjective stance in both Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. According to Auerbach, at this time “the writer as narrator of objective facts has almost completely vanished; almost everything stated appears by way of reflection in the consciousness of the dramatis personae” (534). As Levenson argues, although Woolf does not employ the omniscient narrator like many nineteenth-century authors did to reveal an
objective truth, in To the Lighthouse, “the assertion of the privileges of omniscience is everywhere” (21). However, the narrators do not use this knowledge to show the reader the true self of a character, or to convince the reader that one particular point of view should be seen as the truth.
Unlike Mrs Dalloway, in the middle part “Time Passes” in To the Lighthouse, the central narrator is more overtly present. As in this part the main characters are absent, there is less shifting between characters’ consciousnesses than in the other parts of the novel or in Mrs Dalloway. Although free indirect speech is used, with Mrs McNab for instance, it is not used nearly as often as in the rest of the novel. As Levenson suggests, in this part of the novel, the narrator “assumes the perspective of eternity” (26). However, according to Levenson, this mainly emphasises “the limits of finite perception” in “The Lighthouse”. In the third part of the novel, the narrator’s infinite perspective is “replaced by near-total reliance on a few individuals” (27-8) as opposed to many different perspectives in “The Window”. Therefore,
in the last part, the novel deals with the unknown minds of others more so than in the first part.
Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse and Clarissa in Mrs Dalloway are arguably the main characters of these novels. Although Mrs Ramsay only physically appears in the first part of the novel, the narrative still mainly revolves about her, or her absence, in the other parts. Even though the novels centre around them, and while they do provide the reader with descriptions of the characters’ thoughts, the reader never fully gains access to their minds.
In Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa’s character is not accessed entirely through interior monologues, but neither is she only described from an external, objective point of view. Although the use of free indirect speech may seem to give the reader a more internalised, direct understanding of a character, it does not necessarily have to. According to Edmondson, one of the most forming experiences for Clarissa – the death of her sister – is not described by Clarissa herself, but by Peter Walsh. Edmondson calls this “narrativization” or “theory of mind”, by which she means that Peter “theorizes about Clarissa’s mental states based on evidence necessarily obtained from an external perspective” (18). Because this event is recounted by Peter rather than Clarissa herself, the reader only becomes aware of its
significance through the mediation of Peter, in addition to the mediation of the narrator. He practices theory of mind and projects his own interpretation of Clarissa’s experience and consequently her mental state. According to Palmer, what he calls “double cognitive
narratives” are “the versions of characters’ minds that exist in the minds of other characters” (12). In Mrs Dalloway, Peter Walsh’s is only one such example of a double cognitive
narrative. Most, if not all characters whose point of view is included in the novel project their mind, and their narrative, upon others. As Edmondson points out, the characters who create these narratives “are often first affected by an encounter with another” (26). Similarly, Palmer argues that “our identity is situated among the minds of others” (15). Therefore, the presence
of others is significant in our perception of the characters. In Woolf’s depiction of her characters, the importance of the combination of both internal and external points of view is emphasised.
In To the Lighthouse, the characters interpret the others’ thoughts as well. Levenson notes that every character “[offers] perspectives on the perspective of the other” (20). Auerbach argues that “there is an attempt to approach [Mrs Ramsay] from many sides as closely as human possibilities of perception and expression can succeed in doing” (536). Therefore, every character projects their own thoughts and experiences when explaining another character, but their interpretations are also continuously adapted. The story they tell about others keeps being adjusted according to new insights. As Levenson points out, this is especially evident in the description of what the characters see. He uses the example of Lily describing what Mr Bankes sees in To the Lighthouse, and suggests that this places the characters “within a network of glancing reactions, suggesting that identity is a perpetual negotiation” (24). This connects the narration of To the Lighthouse, and Mrs Dalloway, to the theory of the mirror stage, where everything is defined in relation to external reference points as well. As each reference point is different, the perception of the self constantly adjusts as well.
Likewise, in Mrs Dalloway, the reader is also left to interpret Clarissa’s mental states with the information provided to them, which, as mentioned before, is incomplete. Similar to perceiving and interpreting another person, in Woolf’s texts the reader also does not have full knowledge of the characters and therefore always projects his or her own feelings on them. Goldman argues that every one’s reading of Woolf’s texts is different, which makes every reading different and unique (32). According to Edmondson, rather than “providing her reader with one individual’s fully realised interiority”, Woolf is “ultimately more interested in the question of how people attempt to account for other minds as they exist in reality” (20). By
not providing inconclusive information about the characters, Woolf accentuates the myriad of ways in which reality can be perceived.
In Mrs Dalloway, Woolf employs even more different focalising characters than in To the Lighthouse. While Clarissa walks through London, different people focalise their
perception of her. These might be people who reappear later in the novel as well, but some of these focalisers only appear once, such as Miss Pym. Even though she might not be an especially important character, Miss Pym’s point of view is presented as well in detail:
[S]he breathed in the earthy garden sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, for kind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, this year, turning her head from side to side among the irises and roses and nodding tufts of lilac with her eyes half closed, snuffing in, after the street uproar, the delicious scent, the exquisite coolness. (13-4)
Although much of this part is focalised by Clarissa, the comment on her age seems to be the point of view from Miss Pym, as she specifies the difference with a previous year, and as she observes Clarissa’s behaviour in the flower shop. Therefore, in Mrs Dalloway, by giving voice to many different minor characters, Woolf employs multiple points of view, and provides the reader with different perspectives on the same character.
Therefore, the reader gains knowledge of Clarissa’s character through her own thoughts as much as from the other characters’ perception of her. As Edmondson argues, Woolf does not provide the reader with a “complete inside view” of Clarissa Dalloway, but she provides both internal and external perspectives of the character as she “exists as much in the minds of others … as she does in her own, ‘private’ existence” (21-22). In her notes from working on Mrs Dalloway, Woolf writes that Clarissa “must be seen by other people” (The Hours 420). This again shows the importance of others in establishing a sense of self.
The multiple perspectives also emphasise that, in both novels, the characters are not completely known to the reader. As Levenson points out, almost all “of our information about any character comes from the [multiple] reflected points of view of other characters” (23).
The reader’s knowledge of the characters is an accumulation of information extracted from many different sources. As E. Asher also underlines, the reader learns about the characters largely through other characters, whose memory is “shifting and unreliable” (220). Similarly, Sotirova argues that these reconstructions of other minds present “varying degrees of
accuracy” (9). Therefore, the reader is not presented with a complete image of the characters. At the same time, the reader perceives the character to be more complete because of the observations of both the characters themselves and of the other.
Additionally, the narrator in both Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse does not value one perspective over another. There are often discrepancies between what one character’s thoughts or motivations are and what others think these thoughts or motivations are, thus emphasising the ambiguity of interpreting another person, but these differences are rarely judged as true or false by the narrator. As Hite points out, there is no “overarching authority” who orders all different perspectives (36), which means that there is no one who gives a conclusive answer as to who any character actually is. This does not necessarily show that one view is wrong, but rather that every character’s observation comes from a different point of reference and is therefore relative. Hite argues that, even though the narrator holds an
authoritative position, he or she does not “obliterate the other point of view” (40), leaving the judgment of character up to the reader.
Through the way both Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse are narrated, the inaccessibility of these characters is emphasised. Because the narrator does not provide the reader with all information, Woolf underlines the unknowability of a person. In these novels, she does not provide objective access to her characters by employing an objective narrator. Rather, she indicates that there are multiple perceptions that different characters can have of the same person. The characters have impressions of the other characters, but they ultimately do not know them. According to Nussbaum, this shows that our knowledge of other people is
never without a doubt because it is always based on reading or interpretation (474). By imitating this doubt in the narration of the novels, Woolf creates the same epistemological uncertainty for the reader as the characters in her novels experience.